An Instagram Star Shows How to Style One of Spring’s Biggest Shoe Revivals for Fall

Babouche. Even when you curl your lips to utter the word to describe the traditional North and West African shoe, your jaw relaxes, a signal that something soft, pillowy, cushiony is afoot. They’re slippers, after all—sleek, leather-bound pointy-toed mules with the thinnest of soles and the slightest of frames that date back centuries to the souks of Marrakech, where they continue to dot the stalls of the city’s famed bazaars. And while practically weightless, the diminutive flats carried considerable style as they slid down the Spring 2016 runways of Acne Studios and The Row just a few weeks ago. Demurely flapping underneath the billowy folds of languid pants at The Row’s breathless presentation or the thigh-skimming blazers turned minidresses at Acne, they signaled that fashionable women would be descending from our ubiquitous stilts and sliding our feet into something a bit more grounded come spring.

Of course, a quick glance at the Instagram feed of Amy Sall, Columbia University MA graduate and founder of the forthcoming African affairs, critical thought, and aesthetics journal Sunu, would suggest that the shoe could just as easily be worn in these mercurial days of early fall. Flitting around the city with a chic sense of ease, the Senegalese-American, whose polished personal style is a combination of sleek separates awash in neutrals, has made the African slipper a personal wardrobe staple. Having seen generations of men in her family don the shoe for prayer or Senegalese holidays, Sall began to reinterpret the babouche for her own modern closet while paying homage to her cultural roots.

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Photo: Courtesy of Amy Sall / @amy_sall

“I’m wearing them right now!” she says during a recent phone call. “You can make the babouche as casual and as dressed up as you want. It’s all about how you put your look together. I’m running around the city and I need to be comfortable; I cannot do the ‘fashion over function’ thing. If it’s not comfortable, that shows and it detracts from your elegance, your look. If you appear uncomfortable, your whole look is done.”

It’s true, the angular shape of the babouche lends an air of grace to Sall’s ensembles, but also an element of contrast to her refined style. Peeking out from under oversize culottes, crisp ankle-grazing denim, and sinuous Rick Owens gowns, her black, metallic, and even fur-laced babouches from H&M Collection and her native Senegal allow Sall to easily create unexpected shapes and play with proportion. “I like to incorporate a little bit of awkwardness into my look, whether it’s an oddly cut pant or a flat with a long dress, and I think the babouche offers that,” she says. She’s hanging onto the style until true winter arrives, though she concedes that a pair of fuzzy, charming socks worn with the slippers could help transition the warm-weather slip-ons into chillier temps.

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Photo: Courtesy of Amy Sall / @amy_sall

But, as she explains, she still prefers wearing them over bare feet, making the shoe best suited for warmer months and transitional seasons, like now. “It’s very African to just wear the babouche barefoot, and I don’t want to detract from the Africanness of the style,” Sall says. “I always want to incorporate an element of Africa and culture into my look.”